Crypto Biz: Is Zuckerberg’s $100B metaverse experiment doomed to fail?
Not everyone is convinced that Mark Zuckerberg’s massive metaverse experiment is a good idea. Since Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021, the social media giant’s focus has increasingly shifted to connecting the digital and physical worlds through augmented reality. However, a shareholder of the company recently issued a letter to the CEO calling the metaverse investment “super-sized and terrifying.”
It didn’t take long for those concerns to be justified. Meta published its third-quarter financial results after the bell on Oct. 26 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, its metaverse division underperformed. Meta’s Reality Labs lost a whopping $3.672 billion during the quarter, mirroring a similar decline in Q1. That’s the risk you run when you venture into unchartered territory. For all the hype surrounding the metaverse, these new social worlds remain largely empty. Will Meta fill the void? Only time will tell.
This week’s Crypto Biz chronicles Meta’s metaverse experiment, Tesla’s Bitcoin (BTC) holdings and the sudden surge in Reddit’s nonfungible token (NFT) collection.
While Tesla’s foray into Bitcoin was initially praised by the crypto community, the whole ordeal has been a far bigger distraction for the electric vehicle maker. In the second quarter, Elon Musk’s company sold 75% of its remaining Bitcoin holdings, which added roughly $936 million to its balance sheet. By the end of Q3, Tesla’s remaining BTC was sitting at an unrealized loss of $170 million, according to a new disclosure filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s net loss from BTC isn’t as bad, though, given that Tesla had realized $64 million in profits during its previous sale. Musk proved to have paper hands, after all.
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